Has anyone purchased the turfco xt5 with the Subaru motor? I purchased this unit 2 weeks ago and we have done over 100 jobs with it so I feel I have tested it well and it has been nothing but trouble.

I chose the Subaru engine because I have a Subaru engine in my one of my lawn edger’s, lawn solutions seeder, and my power washer. This Subaru motor in this equipment has been as good as any of my Honda motors so I became a big fan of Subaru small engines which made choosing the Subaru a no brainer when I purchased the Turfco xt5

Problem one: After unpacking this unit it would not run for more than a few minutes running without abruptly stopping. After about an hour of messing with it gave up. The next day one of my guys got it to run so we put it in the trailer to test it out.

Problem 2: Tiny gas tank, maybe 12 – 16 oz. tank at best. We were half way through our 2nd residential aeration of the day and it ran out of gas. My thought was that I just did not fill the tank up completely. The next Job a HOA property about 15k sf. Got one guys on the Turfco then other on our big split drive claussen. The turfco had to be filled up twice to complete the job so my guy had to huff it to the truck get the gas to fill the turfco up. I have never owned commercial equipment that would only run for 30 minutes before running out of gas. This is a big issue when this aerator runs out of gas we can be several hundred feet away from the truck. Very unproductive With a two man crew we do about 12-15 aeration's a day. too much time is spent filling the tank. Per Turfco they have sold many with this motor and there have not been any complaints with the short run time per tank. This may not be a problem with the size of the tank but perhaps my engine has an issue that is consuming fuel faster.

Problem 3: Problem 1 has resurfaced. The unit will abruptly stop running 1-3 times per tank about every other tank. Takes a few pulls to get it going then runs fine until it will abruptly stop running again. Ad refueling every other job and too much time is wasted throughout the day.

Problem 4: First job of the day this engine is a bear to start when it has sits overnight. It takes 25 – 40 pulls to get this running in the morning. This is not an exaggeration. By day 2 of using this machine my guys started counting how many pulls it took to it running so the 25-40 pulls is accurate. Now no one wants the first job with this machine because starting it will wear you out for the day. And these 25 -40 pulls are not Honda motor easy pulls this machine has some compression and takes allot of effort.

Problem 5: Turfco service was great when I purchased the unit. Now there response time and answers to my issues is terrible at best. Still waiting for my call back from Turfco from last week. Now that my 14 day trial period has ended (yesterday) I am guessing they will be calling me to tell me I own it.

When this machine is running it’s a fantastic machine. If I did not have this engine problem, and short run time issues I would have no complaints.

I would love to hear form anyone on this forum has the Turfco x5 with the Subaru motor and if you have seen the issues I have. If not then perhaps I got the lemon out of the bunch.

For now with the engine intermittently shutting off this aerator is going to sit until Turfco either fixes this unit, ship one with the briggs or refunds my money.

Basically the same problems here with my Suburu XT5 as well. Worst starting engine I've ever seen. Turfco never bothered to set rpms correctly as its revs to the moon. I'll be fixing that myself. TurfcoBob, to say this engine uses .11 gal of fuel per hour is quite funny. Its more like a gallon an hour. I have to refuel it after 20-25 minutes of running. Smokes pretty bad on startup as well. I had always had about 50/50 luck with Briggs motors in the past and have a good Suburu on my WB edger so thats why I picked it. What mistake. Tech support did get back to me when I called about it but he had no clue of anything at all about Suburu engines didn't seem overly interested in looking into it. Your right, they snappy to answer questions before the sale but after they got your money you end up quite a bit lower on their priorities. No reason at all should I leave emails and voicemails for over a week straight with no call back. Overall I like the machine vs. my old Ryan but the Suburu is not worth buying unless you need a good exercise in the morning tryign to start. I have bad disk in my back and basically smoked my back out one morning a couple weeks just trying to start it to load it into the trailer. By 7:00 I was already in big trouble physically for the rest of the day.